On saving SoBi, and facing a new lockdown

Can SoBi be saved? Late last week, Uber, corporate owner of the bike-sharing network, announced it was pulling out, even though it recently signed a new contract.

City staff are investigating if there are ways to change Uber’s mind and/or get compensation from the ride-sharing giant for breaking its contract. That’s all good.

But chances are, given the pandemic-induced financial pressures on Uber, the decision won’t be revisited and, at best, Hamilton might get some money to buy time as the bike-sharing service approaches its busiest time of year.

We’d like to optimistically predict City Hall and council will figure out a way to maintain the service, which has an active membership of 26,000. But such optimism could be misplaced, if early reaction from city council is any indicator.

There are some councillors who argue the city should invest in cycling infrastructure in the same way it invests in roads and public transit. That’s a valid point. But it butts hard against the view of other councillors that the city, already facing a deficit of up to $60 million thanks to the pandemic, cannot afford to make new discretionary investments. It’s hard to argue against that.

What’s the answer? To begin with, if SoBi is going to live on in some form with support — financial or otherwise — from City Hall, it needs to be a city-wide service. It is not reasonable to expect municipal support for a service that is only available to downtown residents. This point, made strongly by Coun. Sam Merrulla, is central to the decision.

Also, this isn’t something the city can manage on its own, at least not in the short term. With all the other competing priorities facing City Hall, it needs a partner. It could be nonprofit or corporate-for-profit, assuming there is one out there and one more trustworthy than Uber.

Part of the challenge for any partner is that bikesharing services are not typically profitable. SoBi costs up to $700,000 per year, making this a tall order for any investor, especially with so little time until Uber yanks its funding June 1.

In this day and age, no progressive municipal government can afford to turn its back on cycling infrastructure. But neither can we afford to pile on deficit spending with no end in sight. Creative solutions anyone?

III

Much as we’d prefer to ignore the pandemic on a gorgeous spring weekend, we cannot.

Provinces to our east and west are reopening, at the same time as their COVID-19 testing is expanding and their reported new cases are decreasing. That’s the happy story.

But it’s not Ontario’s story. Here, our new cases daily have risen back above 400 for the last several days. And our testing remains woefully short of capacity and targets.

Consider the words of Colin Furness, an infection control epidemiologist and an assistant professor at the Faculty of Information at the University of Toronto. In an interview with our sister paper, The Toronto Star, he said: “Our testing is very limited in Ontario, limited and apparently shrinking ... We have a very poor understanding of how many cases there are there. So the case count that we have every day doesn’t tell you how much COVID there is ...”

He’s not alone. Other experts are openly worrying that the Ford government’s reopening plan is premature given the state of the pandemic in this province. If so, we could see our limited reopening yanked back into lockdown. No one wants that, so let’s do our part.